Uganda

Not fit for a queen

The end of the road for Kampala's signature taxis

LONDON has black cabs, New York its yellow ones. Bangkok has tuk-tuks and Hanoi has rickshaws. In Kampala, the boda-boda motorcycle taxi is the Ugandan capital's defining symbol. In the 1960s, entrepreneurial cyclists found that travellers would pay a few shillings to have themselves and their goods transported across the no-man's-land between the borders of Uganda and Kenya. From border to border, the boda-boda was born.

Please, your majesty, let us drive you around

Since then the bikes have become motorised. For the locals, rates are fixed, but foreigners can expect to bargain hard and still pay far too much. But it is worth it: weaving between cars, dodging potholes and riding along the pavement to avoid Kampala's jams is as exhilarating as any fairground ride. And you arrive on time, if a bit dusty.

But now boda-bodas are under threat—from the Commonwealth. To prepare for hosting next year's summit of the organisation in Uganda, the capital is having a makeover. A senior foreign-ministry official boasts that $300m has already been invested in ventures to spruce things up. Pitted roads are being relaid; smart new hotels will house an expected influx of 5,000 delegates.

But the boda-boda is likely to be a casualty of this vast civic spring-clean. For the government says they have become a “menace and a problem to the city traffic” and wants them off the streets by January. The drivers—wont to lounge in packs on street corners, attired in a random assortment of jackets and helmets, dozing between fares and whistling at girls—say the government thinks they are too unkempt and anarchic for the image that Uganda is hoping to project.

Bad news for Kampala's estimated 10,500 boda-boda drivers. They can earn up to $5 a day, whereas most rural workers earn less than a fifth of that. “This Commonwealth will throw us out,” says one. “Please, you will pray for us!” he shouts as he speeds away, black smoke spewing from the exhaust of his invaluable bike of burden.